Has it occurred to anyone that America has great luck? Take the situation in Iraq as an example. A casual observer might think our support of the Shia Iraqis has been incompetent and foolish. Sure. But does it matter? Not if we have great luck.

Sure 'nuff, in Iraq we have great luck. Look at our allies: Iran, Russia, and Syria. These are countries we've been hostile to for years, decades even. But they want to help the Shia Iraqis more than Obama does. Plus, they've got the right experience and skill set to do it.

America's outwardly friendly allies in Persian Gulf Sunni regimes have supported the Sunnis in Syria. The US government has sided against Syria, Iran, and Russia for decades. Yet in spite of all this we are so lucky that our enemies want to be our allies against the Sunni Islamic Caliphate. That's big time luck. Think about it. We've done the exact opposite of what we'd need to do to curry favor with the only countries that want to help the Shias in Iraq. Yet those countries want to help us anyway.

While Obama and Congress are being all sorts of tentative about jet and Apache attack helicopter sales this is not a problem. Russia is rushing into the gap with fighters and choppers. Lucky us. Heck, even Belarus is helping out. Iran is sending in their military advisers to make up for the small number of special forces send in by Obama. Russia has sent in military advisers too. Bashir al-Assad is sending in air strikes while Obama decides whether to do airstrikes. We can be pretty lame and tentative and get away with it. That's pretty cool.

It is important to take note of all the skills and experience our allies bring to the great game. Syria has provided the training ground for Russia and Iran to figure out how to keep a minority regime in power against a hostile Sunni majority an against money from Persian Gulf oil states. This is great. We've got allies who were dealt a worse hand in Syria than we have in Iraq and yet they played that hand skillfully and brought an almost failed regime back from the brink of destruction. Surely they can help turn the tide of battle in Iraq. We sure are lucky.

I see America as a declining empire. But maybe I'm being too pessimistic. Maybe we have such great luck that things won't get nearly as worse as they would in any other country faced with the same problems. Given all the things going wrong I certainly hope so.

"A special providence watches over children, drunkards, and the United States of America."

I'll second that, but only with the U.S. We can no become informed and see all that child abuse and how drunkards at least pay with a hangover.

Nevertheless, and regarding the U.S. we can rightly say that everything must end sooner or later. Time cools down everything, even "providence", whaterver the hell the word means. Everything in this world has an expiration date. Everything. It's just a condition in this universe.

of course, the Russian Su-25s and attack helos are going to be flown by Russians. I don't know how long it takes to train a combat pilot, but it would have to be many months. in the interim, Ivan and Sergei will be at the controls.